Amanda Taylor

so i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house. been wanting to do this for months but kept putting it off because i wasnt sure if my setup was good enough or whatever. ended up just throwing the KX2 and a random wire antenna in a backpack and driving out there got 12 contacts in about an hour and a half which i know is just barely over the minimum but hey it counts right. mostly 40m, tried 20m for a bit but conditions werent great that afternoon. spotted myself on the POTA app and things picked up after that, had a little pileup for maybe 10 minutes which was fun and kind of stressful at the same time couple questions for people who do this regularly -- when you upload your log do you just use ADIF straight from your logger or is there something else i should know about. also i noticed some hunters were sending their grid squares in their exchange, is that standard or just something some folks do. and is there a good way to know ahead of time if a park has already been activated a bunch of times vs one that hasnt been done much, does that even matter

ok so i've been interested in ham radio for like a year now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it got me curious. i looked up some stuff online but there's so much conflicting info about whether to start with technician or just go straight for general, and i dont even know what the difference really means practically speaking. like what can you actually DO with each one. also i saw some people saying you can just memorize the question pool and pass without really learning anything and other people saying thats a bad idea. idk i feel like i just want to pass the test and then figure out the actual radio stuff after. is that how most people do it? and is hamstudy.org actually good or is there something better. sorry if this is a dumb question

so ive been mulling this over for a while and finally decided to just start messing with it. basically i want to use an arduino mega to handle my antenna switching between like 4 different antennas based on what band i qsy to. right now im doing it all manually with a coax switch and its getting old especially during contests when im jumping around a lot. my rough idea is to read the band data output from my ic-7300 (it has that on the acc port i think?) and then use relays to switch between the antennas automatically. i already have a relay module i pulled off an old project, 8 channel one from amazon that i never really used for anything serious. has anyone done something like this or something similar? im not super experienced with arduino stuff but i can read code okay and modify things. not starting from zero but not super confident either. also wondering if a raspberry pi would be better for this or if the arduino is overkill or underkill or whatever. pi seems like more than i need honestly but maybe im wrong

yeah the cold shack touchscreen thing is real, i had the same issue and ended up just using the main dial and the multi knob for most stuff instead of poking at the screen. you get used to working around it. also the ATU on the 7300 is decent but its not gonna be happy with really bad mismatches, if you're regularly hitting the edges of bands with a wonky feedpoint impedance you might be better off with an external tuner and just bypassing the internal one. LDG makes some decent stuff that pairs well with Icom rigs. the waterfall really does change how you operate, took me probably a month before i stopped treating it like a toy and actually started using it tactically for finding open frequencies. now i cant imagine going back to a radio without it.

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend, been meaning to do one for ages and just never got around to it. picked a local nature reserve about 20 mins from home, KFF-2847 or something like that, had to look it up on the wwff directory which took me a little while to figure out honestly. anyway i set up my end-fed near the trailhead, ran about 40 watts on 40m and 20m and managed to get 47 QSOs in about 2.5 hours which i think is decent? the threshold for a valid activation is 44 contacts right, so i just squeaked past it. had a few hunters call in from europe which was a nice surprise. my question is about logging — im using HAMRS on my tablet and it seemed to work fine but when i went to upload to the wwff logbook i wasnt sure if i needed to do anything special with the ADIF export or if it just goes straight in. also do i need to post to the wwff spotting network myself or do people just find you? overall though what a great program, cant believe i waited this long to try it

congrats on the first activation, that's a great feeling getting those 4 QSOs and qualifying. the alert time thing is something everyone figures out eventually. what most people do is just post a fresh self-spot when youre actually on the air and ready — the alert is really just to let chasers know you're planning to be somewhere around that time, nobody expects you to be perfectly on schedule. if you have cell service you can update the alert on sotawatch but honestly most activators I know just spot themselves when they're set up and chasers watch for that. the S2S guys especially watch the spots closely. the trekking pole antenna thing is a good skill to have, I do it on almost every activation now since summits above treeline dont give you many options. worth setting up in the yard like you said just to get the feel for it. also for future reference if you can post on the SOTA reflector or the regional groups before a big first activation there are often local hams who will make a point to be listening for you which helps a lot with that initial pile-up anxiety.

yeah so theres Technician, General, and Amateur Extra — Technician is where everyone starts and honestly its not that bad. i used hamstudy.org to study for mine, just did like 20-30 questions a day for a couple weeks and it tracks how youre doing so you can focus on the weak areas. the question pool is public so technically you could just memorize the answers but i found it way easier to understand at least the basic concepts otherwise some of the questions trip you up when they word them slightly different. the test itself is 35 questions and you need a 74% to pass so 26 correct. find a local club and they usually hold VE sessions pretty regularly, some clubs even do free study sessions before the test which is really helpful if you dont know anyone yet. good luck with it, most people pass on the first try if they actually study

Planning to set up a VHF RMS gateway on 145.090 MHz and weighing VARA FM versus traditional packet radio options. VARA FM uses efficient FEC/ARQ protocol with significant speed improvement over traditional packet radio - over 2X faster than 9600 baud packet and automatically shifts speed levels based on signal quality. RMS Packet supports both AX.25 packet and VARA FM using single or multiple radios through TNCs, soundcard programs or soft modems. What's the real-world throughput difference in message handling? Any compatibility concerns with older client stations still running packet-only setups?